It doesn't disturb me because I don't see how a large, overarching one size fits all federal infrastructure for education can help a country as large and diverse as ours. As for the government strangling the life from projects, some of them never worked in the first place.BulletMagnet wrote: And that fact in itself doesn't somehow disturb you? The government already doesn't care nearly enough about education, and it's trying to concern itself with it even less than it currently does. The same goes for health care and the like; the government strangles all the life out of it, and then points to it and says "See? Big government doesn't work!" and uses that as an excuse for further privatization.
17 billion dollars, while small in comparison to the total size of our budget, is still a ton of money that could be used elsewhere, if not simply given back to people whom it was taken from.From what I know NASA hasn't exactly been swimming in money for some time...considering the various difficulties they've had with some of their recent operations, and the outdated nature of much of their equipment, it makes sense. Speaking of which, didn't the Prez propose some kind of mission to Mars some time ago...what happened to that?
No, it means that once you instate a program/department, it becomes almost impossible to get rid of, no matter how useless it is (if you've taken a freshman American politics class this should be familiar to you) and that we need to critical of effectiveness rather than seeing it as a black/white game of cutting/increasing funds.Does that mean that you just plain shouldn't offer anything in the first place, though? This brings to mind the current plight of some of the Katrina refugees who have been in hotels since being displaced: IIRC, apparently FEMA's not paying for at least some of them anymore. The people, as you'd expect, don't want to leave, since they have noplace to go. Should the government have just left them on their own from the get-go? Considering the slow response to the disaster, it almost seems as it they tried to do just that...
Here's an example; the government sets up a welfare program to combat poverty. A billion dollars is spent and there is no real decrease in poverty. The next year, it ups it's budget by another billion yet no results are seen. This continues for a decade, the government is spending 10 billion dollars on a worthless program with no results to show for it. The next year, an intrepid governor says fuck it, let's halve the budget for this program and try a different approach. Do you think ANYONE would see that as anything other than a governor attempting to fuck over the poor?
In more human terms, if you paid someone a thousand dollars to fix your roof and they do a shitty job that doesn't improve the problems you have, are you going to pay them an other 1,500 just to have another whack at it?
Even though I'm ideologically opposed to big government, I have no problem admitting when government programs/spending are effective. If they aren't, then I say, why do we have them?
You just answered your own question. It's because they don't have an interest in them and they aren't required for their needs. Bush doesn't get millions of dollars worth of campaign contributions from school teachers or people on welfare. Give me a few minutes and I could produce half a dozen lists of programs that could be easily cut away and would save taxpayers billions of dollars. I agree. I think the entirety of the government should be cut in size. I just don't think we should have sacred cows and be averse to cutting funding or scrapping altogether departments and programs that simply don't get results. We need to be more critical about government spending, and not give them blanket checks to spend as much as they want on certain things because of the "goodness" of said things (healthcare, education etc).To a point I agree, but again, why does it seem that ONLY public institutions which this administration would rather just throw out the window are being told to "trim the fat," and others are either left as they are or further exempted from any economic sacrifices whatsoever?
Yeah, I know this is the weirdest thing one could read on a "Shoot'em Up!" forum. ^_^
